Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

[Addicted2Extreme]

Is it just me, or can you pass a clep with barely any studying. Hear me out:
Clep is pass/fail right? You need a 50 to pass, correct? If the scoring of a clep test is 20-80, that means all you need to pass is to get 50% of the questions, correct? I mean a score of 50 is smack dab in the middle of 20-80. I know we don't know exactly how tests are scored, but this seems to make sense, right?

Now here's the tricky part:
If you randomly selected ALL of the answers on a clep test, you have exactly a 50/50 chance to pass or fail. Keeping that in mind, if you study a certain topic, and become knowledgeable of let's say 25% of the subject, and completely guess the rest, you can be reasonably assured that you will get more than 50% of the questions correct, right? Am I making any sense at all here?
So far I have studied for 4 tests and passed all of them. I'm starting to think that I really don't have to prepare as much as I have been doing. Take College Mathematics for example. I SUCK at math, and was very nervous. I studied for about a week, got a 67. The thing is, even though I studied plenty, I ended up guessing on a bunch of answers. And I still passed with plenty of room to spare.
So am I way off here, or can I just study about 25% of any upcoming cleps, guess the rest, and still pass easily?

[Maniac Craniac]

Is it just me, or can you pass a clep with barely any studying.

If you are barely studying for a CLEP, you are overstudying for a CLEP. :leaving:

[andy3000]

The scores are scaled, and I think they use regular college students taking class in the subject as a yard stick. So it could be that the bar isn't set all that high. The feedback in members section is usually correct about how hard it is to pass the tests.

[Potatoloco]

If you randomly select an answer on every question, that'd give you a 20% chance to be correct. Edit *MA2 is right, there's 5 questions, so the math goes down from 25% to 20%*

I have not done many CLEPs, only 2 so far. That being said I think the rate of difficulty depends on what someone's particular intellectual skill set allows them to do.

I view it more as a risk to reward ratio. For me, an easy CLEP test equals a 55-65 score thus far over a small sample size. My skill set doesn't allow me to study for only one week and turn in an outstanding score. I believe I'm capable of turning in passing scores for a majority of the time though.

I remember seeing a statistics sheet showing only about 38-40% of the DSST tests have 50% pass rates. I think military stats showed about 25% of the CLEP tests to have 50% pass rates. I'd imagine the general public doesn't drive these statistics up too far.

So that being said, statistically, anyone that claims they're all easy is the exception and not the norm. Otherwise these stats would be reversed and the percentage of passing rates would be much much higher.

[MA2]

Well go ahead and try it then Mr. smarty pants, but don't whine on here if you fail.

Also, every CLEP I've taken has 5 answers per question, not 4, so that throws your math off.

My school won't accept college mathematics because they consider it a "remedial math class." So don't think passing it with a 67 means other CLEPs will be so easy. Go take Calculus using your method and let us know how that works for you.

[PonyGirl93]

Also, you have to keep in mind that a 50=C... Getting a C in your average gen ed class at college doesn't require much effort, either. Me being an unabashed perfectionist, I am not thrilled with a 50 or a C. Some people are totally fine with that :]

[burbuja0512]

I wonder if the person that started this thread has ever taken a CLEP..



Ok.. in all fairness, yes some CLEP's are easy for some adults. I took Spanish, A & I lit, Intro to Computing and Technical Writing either cold or almost totally cold and passed all of them. It wasn't because I'm a good guesser though, it's because of my life experience, but isn't that the point of a test? Isn't it to get credit for stuff that you've learned already? Would any sane college want me to sit in Spanish 101 when I can probably speak it better than the teacher?

Yes, you'll see us talking about easy tests on the forums, but if you don't study, or don't have life experience in the topic, they're not as simple as we make it sound.

Don't believe me? I challenge you to go in and take a test in an area that you are TOTALLY unfamilar. (Maybe Modern Middle east?) Come back and let us know how things went.

[creative]

Yes, you'll see us talking about easy tests on the forums, but if you don't study, or don't have life experience in the topic, they're not as simple as we make it sound.

I think this is a key point. I think new people come on this forum and think these exams are a walk in the park. There are so MANY variables that determine if someone gets a good score after minimal study. When someone puts a post on here that they passed after only a few hours of study we don't know the variables that went into that particular person having success like that and it leads us to believe that somehow this is the norm. I don't believe it is the norm. We RARELY hear the flip side..... barely anyone posts on their failures and why it happened. I know burbuja posted on one test she did not pass and the reasons why. I thought that took guts and also gives a more balanced perspective on these exams. Everyone is different. I take longer to study- way longer. I might be a snail but the main thing is to finish

[cookderosa]

EDIT: anyone insulting this forum and its members won't get anything from me.

[irnbru]

Is it just me, or can you pass a clep with barely any studying. Hear me out:
Clep is pass/fail right? You need a 50 to pass, correct? If the scoring of a clep test is 20-80, that means all you need to pass is to get 50% of the questions, correct? I mean a score of 50 is smack dab in the middle of 20-80. I know we don't know exactly how tests are scored, but this seems to make sense, right?

I think this is a perfectly valid point - probably a lot of us were surprised how quickly and easily we could trade some of our previous experience and education for our first college credits.

I also think it's important not to confuse the tests which are relatively easier with the entire process; a fair few CLEPs, DSSTs, etc are essentially high school material, but it would be massively unlikely that anyone could pass out a whole degree taking tests cold.

Analysing and Interpreting Literature and Intro to Psychology/Sociology are usually cited as easier tests because they cover general and basic material relative to most people's experience. That said, for anyone working in business for a reasonable part of their adult life, Intro to Management or Marketing might be the easiest tests. It depends a lot on the individual. CLEP Computer Systems and Applications is alien to some people but someone working in the industry or familiar with it could take it cold. Another really good example would be the language CLEP exams; speak, read and write French, Spanish or German? Go and collect 12 credits. Never touched another language? Months of study are required, starting with the absolute basics and working your way up.

Which is what a lot of these tests are - entry level college courses and general education requirements. Passing Analysing and Interpreting Literature will not guarantee anything if you then want to sit English (or American ) Literature. Intro to Psychology prepares you for but is a mere prerequisite for the other psychology tests. I'm thinking most people would have a hard time passing Money and Banking without the necessary prerequisites of economics and accounting. Then again, maybe you are working in finance and have professional qualifications but no degree - guess which is your path of least resistance

Finally, College Maths is the starting point for just about any other maths course. If you honestly struggled with it but managed to beat the odds and pass, then great! I'd probably take the good fortune along with the understanding that the next test in the same subject will be harder. Appreciating that converting existing knowledge and understanding into college credit and targeting the easier tests is the best strategy is common sense.

Now here's the tricky part:
If you randomly selected ALL of the answers on a clep test, you have exactly a 50/50 chance to pass or fail. Keeping that in mind, if you study a certain topic, and become knowledgeable of let's say 25% of the subject, and completely guess the rest, you can be reasonably assured that you will get more than 50% of the questions correct, right? Am I making any sense at all here?
So far I have studied for 4 tests and passed all of them. I'm starting to think that I really don't have to prepare as much as I have been doing. Take College Mathematics for example. I SUCK at math, and was very nervous. I studied for about a week, got a 67. The thing is, even though I studied plenty, I ended up guessing on a bunch of answers. And I still passed with plenty of room to spare.
So am I way off here, or can I just study about 25% of any upcoming cleps, guess the rest, and still pass easily?

Since you were honest about your math skills, here're the probabilities you should have learned for the College Math CLEP

Let's say a multiple-choice CLEP test has 100 questions with 5 choices for each question. We have a strong feeling that we have correctly answered 25 questions correctly. (A CLEP score is a t-score on a normal distribution. How it is corrected, noone knows. The mean is 50 without amendment.) We have to answer at least another 25 questions correctly to make our goal of 50. What is the probability of randomly guessing the remaining 75 questions and answering at least 25 of them correctly?

This question is an example of a Bernouli trial and requires the use of the binomial probability forumla which is:

(n_C_r)*(p^r)*q^(n-r)

where

n_C_r=n!/[r!(n-r)!]
n=number of questions(75)
r=number of questions guessed right(25)
p=probability of guessing right(0.2)
q=1-p(0.8)

Putting these into the forumla gives us:

(75_C_25)*(0.2^25)*[(0.8)^50]

However, this only gives us the probability of guessing exactly 25 questions correctly. If we guessed 26, 27, ... , 75 questions correctly, this would be just as good. So, we need to sum the probabilities of guessing 26 out of 75, 27 out of 75, ..., 75 out of 75. Obviously using a calculator to do this bit, however, the sum part is a good indication of an opportunity to apply integration, but as that is outside the College Math syllabus, using calculator.

So, P(r>=25)=Sum(r=25 to 75){(75_C_r)*(0.2^r)*[0.8^(75-r)]}=0.00467

In other words, if you and everyone else answered 25 questions right out of 100 and need to guess 25 more, just under half a per cent of all the people following this strategy would be successful.

Interestingly, if you required 120 credits and took 20 tests at 6 credits each, the probability of someone who followed the strategy you described passing each test first time would be 0.00467^20. That is a very small number.

I don't know how many questions were on your CLEP. If there were 90 and you had already answered 25 correctly, to make a 50 t-score (50% right) you only needed to answer another 20 questions correctly out of 65. The probability of achieving this by guessing the remaining questions rises to 0.0261. Nonetheless, applying this strategy would leave a group of 100 people with 97 of them a little unhappy

However, for multiple-choice tests where there are 4 options, the probability of guessing 25 out of 75 questions rises even further to 0.0657 which is probably enough to book a good table for fajitas and ice cream for the successful test-takers.